The Reindeer People (15 page)

He only looked at her. She lifted her eyes to Heckram, and then met her son's stare. 'Better than mine. All I brought down was two skinny birds. But you, you have brought home all this meat on your first hunt.' Suddenly she straightened, standing braver in the night. 'See how well my son hunts!' she exclaimed to Heckram. The pride in her voice rang true. 'Soon it will be, not rabbits, but fat deer he brings. The fat will sizzle over the fire, and all will smell its richness.'

A portion of his earlier triumph came back to the boy's face. He lifted the rabbits slowly, hefted them in his arms. 'Come into our tent,' he told Heckram grandly. 'My mother will cook my kill, and we two hunters will eat well tonight.'

Kerlew led the way to the tent and Heckram followed. He had to stoop to enter, and the light from the lamp struck a bronze sheen in his dark hair. The flap fell behind them, and Tillu stood alone in the dark. Had that been her son, speaking so well, standing almost straight? Had he really killed those rabbits, or had he only shared Heckram's hunt? She shook her head, and the question suddenly seemed to matter less than the question of why Heckram would take her son hunting. And then defend the boy from her own hasty judgment. And salvage the boy's triumph from her thoughtless humiliation of him.

Their voices reached her from within the tent, Kerlew's higher as he replied to something the man had said, and then their voices merging in a shout of laughter. I could walk away into the night, she thought. I would walk away and leave my son with him, and he would do well by the boy. I could not let Carp take my son. But I could give Kerlew to this Heckram and not regret it.

The tent flap lifted again, light spilling out. 'Come inside,' Kerlew called impatiently. 'Share my meat and Heckram's news. He is taking a woman soon, that Elsa. Is he not a lucky man?' He darted back inside without awaiting her reply.

'Is she not a lucky woman?' Tillu asked softly, then frowned over her words. She walked back to the tent she shared with her son.

The pain in Heckram's voice jerked Ristin's attention from the tent hide she was piercing for lacing. He shadowed the door of the sod hut, the day bright behind him. She squinted her eyes against the glare, and he stepped in, letting the flap fall behind him. He looked stricken. In that moment she knew what he would look like as a corpse. It frightened her.

She tried not to show it. 'That's a long face for the man whose betrothal gathering is but five nights away.' She patted the hide on her lap. 'I've nearly finished boring the holes. Elsa has the sinew ready for the lacing. If you'd but make the time to cut and trim poles for it, this tent could be finished by nightfall. Or are you having second thoughts?'

As if he had ever had the first thought about this joining. He smiled a sickly smile. 'On the contrary. I've just decided to slaughter my fattest harke for the feast. Care to help me with the butchering?'

She stared at him in consternation, knowing full well that he grudged slaughtering any of his animals, let alone his heaviest reindeer ox. 'But I thought you were going hunting for meat ...' she began faintly.

'So I was, but something's saved me the trouble. It's Bruk. He'll have to be butchered. I'd like some help.'

Ristin stood abruptly, letting the bone awl and heavy leather hide slip from her lap. Without words she followed him out of the sod house and behind it, into the area where their pulkor harkar were hobbled. The sun was bright against the snow, but the air was cold. Ristin wrapped her arms around herself, wishing that she had paused to pull on her outdoor tunic. The back of winter was broken, and the light stretched longer with every day, but that did not mean that the true thaw of spring had begun. She hastened to match her son's long stride, straining to hear his muttered words.

'I was going to harness Bruk up and drive the pulkor over to the healer's. I wanted to invite her and the boy to the betrothal feast. But when I came out here -'

Heckram gestured.

Ristin's two harkar had wandered up to the edge of the woods and were busily pawing up the snow in their search for lichen. The rest of their animals grazed higher in the hills with the main herd. Those two harness harkar and Bruk were kept close by the hut for convenience. Bruk was a prime animal, weighing twice as much as her tall son, even if the harke's shoulders came but chest high on the man. Bruk's coat was sleek, and his neck and haunches rippled with muscle. He could carry his own weight in a pack load, or pull a loaded sledge all day without faltering. Heckram had broken him to harness two years ago when Bruk was a feisty three-year-old. Now he was as responsive an animal as any herder could wish for, healthy and strong, with a long life of usefulness ahead of him. Ristin could not think of a possession her son valued more.

But the harke was down in the snow, not browsing with the others. He rested now, but his sides heaved as if he had run all night. Then, as Ristin watched, the reindeer heaved itself up on its front legs. Panting and grunting, it struggled to rise. But his hind legs were limp and useless, remaining bent in the snow. He sagged back into the pawed snow around him, his exhaustion evident, and sounded his distress with coughing grunts.

'What's wrong with him?' Ristin demanded, fearing some new disease. She made no move to approach.

'His hock tendons are severed. Something did it in the night.' Heckram was keeping his voice carefully neutral, but Ristin knew the effort it cost him. Bruk represented the work of years, had been Heckram's sturdiest and best harke. Now he was useless for anything but meat. It was a staggering blow to a man considering marriage.

And an inconceivable accident. 'But how?' Ristin demanded, her voice rising with her outrage. 'No wolverine kills that way. A bear mauls. A wolf might hamstring a wild reindeer. But any predator would have killed and fed before it left. And we heard nothing last night.'

'Bruk was used to people. He probably just stood there, expecting the harness.' As Heckram spoke he moved closer to the panicky animal. He placed a gentling hand on his shoulder, and Bruk turned puzzled eyes to his master. 'Steady, fellow,' Heckram comforted him. He moved in closer to Bruk as the wearied animal let his head sink, calming him with his touch and soothing words. Then Heckram sank his knife in, a straight swift blow to the heart. He gave a practiced twist to the blade and left it in the wound. Bruk gave one startled bellow, then slowly foundered into the trampled snow. Little blood escaped from the wound. It was the herdfolk's way of killing a meat animal. The blood would collect in the chest cavity to congeal, then to be scooped out with birch scoops by the butchers and made into blood sausage.

Ristin, hardened as she was to butchering time, flinched as the knife went in. She was silent as a final shudder ran through Bruk's heavy shoulders.

'Who would do such a thing?' she wondered aloud in a choked voice. 'Have you reported it to Capiam? He should come and see this before we butcher, to witness the truth of what we say. Whoever did this must be brought before the herdlord!'

'No.' Heckram spoke softly but firmly. He knelt down in the snow beside the fallen animal. His knife haft stuck up from the dead beast, but he stroked the fur on its side as if it would take comfort from his touch. 'No, I have told only you. Nor shall we. Think about it, mother. Has Capiam sent word of his congratulations on my betrothal? Has he sent a gift of food, or offered one for the feast? Who has? Lasse's grandmother, of course. Rilk, and Reynor, Trode and Lanta, Jakke. Ibb and Bror. All of them folk living as close to the edge as we do. Those who could spare it the least have sent the most. And those who wallow in food, and feed their dogs what our children would be glad for? They have sent nothing, no word, no gift, no sign.

'So shall I give them the satisfaction of watching me run to Capiam, bemoaning the loss of one animal and crying out for justice? No. There would be no justice, only satisfaction for whoever did it. He would know his blow had hurt. So. We shall have a butchering instead. You and I. Our finest harke, to honor Elsa and her family. Bruk will be a bit tough. He wasn't young, and he was struggling for a long time before I even found him. But there will be plenty of him, and it will speak well of our opinion of Elsa and her family.' He ran his hand again over the shining hair. 'He'll make a nice bedhide for Elsa.'

'Shall I ask Lasse if he will help?' Ristin asked softly.

'Not yet,' Heckram replied. 'Later. After he can no longer tell the hind tendons were cut before the animal died. I want no word of complaint from us or on our behalf. Perhaps someone will be cocky enough to betray himself.'

'You suspect Joboam.' It was a statement, not a query. 'Are you going to tell Elsa?'

'No.'

'You mean later.'

'I mean no. These are supposed to be happy days for her. I won't have our betrothal degraded by worry and fear. Besides, wouldn't it spoil the effect of my slaughtering a harke if she knew I had to?' He gave his mother a wolfish grin. 'Let me keep credit for the act in the eyes of my wife-to-be.'

'Heckram, it's a poor way to start out, with secrets and hidden worries.'

'Don't scold me about it, for I didn't choose it.'

'Hmph.' His mother rose from crouching beside him. 'I'll bring the skinning knives. Doesn't look very fat, does he?'

'Not as fat as he was two months ago. But better than anything else I've got set by. Better than a wild reindeer. Poor Bruk.'

A note in his voice turned Ristin back to him. 'Heckram. If you aren't going to seek justice before Capiam, then you must let it go. There is no other way; not among our people. Such is our tradition.'

'New traditions are starting up everywhere, Ristin. Hamstringing the bridegroom's best harke before his betrothal feast, harassing a woman with your attentions because her family is not as wealthy as yours ... I may start a few traditions of my own.'

Ristin looked her contempt for the idea. 'Are you a man, or a little boy? So do children speak, threatening one another, rolling and tussling in the dirt as if that would prove who is wrong or right. Are you from some forest tribe, where they kill their own folk, and maim one another in their brawlings? No! We are herdfolk. Men do not kill men! If someone becomes so degraded that we cannot let him live among us, we drive him away, and that is punishment enough. Act like a savage, and you shame me, and your father's memory. And you will be the one driven away from the herdfolk.'

Heckram only stared at the fallen harke, silent but unrepentant of his words. Ristin sensed the depth of his anger and came to stand beside him. She spoke more gently. 'You never told me how Joboam reacted when you told him that Elsa was promised to you.'

'There was nothing to tell. I didn't confront him to shame him, though now I wish I had. I thought it better to treat the matter as if nothing were amiss. For the sake of Elsa's pride, more than his. I waited for a time that seemed fitting. A group of hunters had just returned, Joboam among them. They were standing about, comparing kills for the day. I walked up to them and said, I have fared better than any of you at the hunt today, for Elsa has set a date for our betrothal feast. Some of them wished me joy. Amma, joker that he is, wondered aloud if I were the hunter or the prey. Some said nothing, but turned away to speak of other matters. Joboam glared at me, then turned aside. There was nothing said.'

'It's like him, to slink about like a heel-biting dog. You've a bad enemy there, Heckram. One who has the ear of the herdlord.'

Heckram grunted. 'Well, if he has the herdlord's ear, let him have Capiam's daughter as well. I've heard she's not happy with the mate she'll take this summer by the Cataclysm. So let her have Joboam instead.'

'You shouldn't listen to such gossip. Kari but pretends reluctance, to be seen as more maidenly. As I recall, there was talk of pairing her with Joboam, several years ago. But nothing came of it.'

'I shouldn't listen to gossip? Listen to you. If you must tell it, at least get it right.' Heckram had drawn his blade of polished flint, the legacy of his father. He began a careful incision at the animal's anus, working carefully up the belly to avoid puncturing the gut sac and spilling bile and waste on the meat inside. 'Joboam wouldn't have her. He made his excuses pretty ones, but that's what it came down to. Pirtsi only took her to get a place at Capiam's side. The girl is feckless as a late-born calf, and fey besides. She's always either weeping or moping. Pretty as she is, who'd want to share a hearth with that?'

'And Pirtsi is such a man as should make any woman's heart leap?' Ristin asked sarcastically. 'When he isn't strutting like a marsh-bird in spring, he's rutting with any woman foolish enough to accept him. It cannot make Kari proud to hear such things of the man she will join this spring.'

'I thought she was but pretending maidenly reluctance?' Heckram asked. His incision inched up Bruk's hairy belly. He pulled the knife free, wiped clinging hair and blood from it against his pant leg, and then eased it back into its groove. 'They'll make a fine pair, no doubt. She can weep when he comes near her, and mope when he does not.'

Ristin rose slowly, her knee joints crackling. 'I'll bring the knives,' she repeated, ignoring his comments. But as she went she called back over her shoulder, 'Unless one knows a person's sorrows, one can't sympathize. But one shouldn't assume that misery is groundless, either.'

The hide pulled up, parting from the meat as the integuments beneath it gave way with a ripping sound. Occasionally the knife licked in, to slice across a stubborn bit. But skinning the animal was more a matter of pulling the hide free than of cutting it off. 'See? You keep the tension steady and slice along under the skin as you need to. That way you get a hide without holes, and no big chunks of meat stuck to it that have to be scraped off later. See? You only use the knife where you have to. When you get to the tail ... Kerlew!'

The boy's head jerked around and he pulled his bloody fingers quickly from the dead calf's mouth. 'What?' he asked his mother, shifting nervously.

'Why aren't you paying attention? You need to learn how to skin an animal, so you can hunt and prepare your own meat. What were you doing, anyway?'

'Nothing,' the boy answered guiltily. 'Here, I'll do it now.'

He drew his own blade, the one Heckram had given him. Rising, he took a firm grip on the loosened flap of hide and tugged it upward. The membranous layer that held the hide to the meat stretched tight. It was transparent stuff, bubbly and clear as froth to look at, but sticky and clinging to bare hands. As the boy pulled harder, some parted with a ripping sound. The inside of the hide was creamy white and slick-looking. The meat was covered with thinly transparent integument, the functional lines of muscle bared to curious eyes. The naked animal was purple and white and deep red. The hide clung at a stubborn place. Kerlew reached down with his blade and, with a slashing stab, ripped a gaping hole in the hide.

The boy froze, staring at the damage. Tillu expelled a long sigh, it's all right,' she forced herself to say. 'You're learning. Next time, make your knife follow the curve of the animal's body. Cut close to the meat, not the skin. Keep trying. But don't pull on the hide at the weak spot now, or it will rip further. Go to a different place and work from there.'

The warm smell of the fresh kill filled the air. Tillu had already rolled the gut sac clear of the body. Watching Kerlew's knifework, she was glad she hadn't allowed him to help with that part. One puncture of the gut sac could impart a rank flavor to the whole animal. Once the hide was off, she would butcher the calf into manageable pieces, and then they could lug it home.